By the time that this has been posted, our son and daughter-in-law will have taken their newborn daughter, their two dogs and their essential living items into their car and struck out for California. They moved in with us almost ten months ago in a transition period that meant selling two houses in two different states, carrying on work from home jobs, accepting a new position and finding a new place to live–on the other side of the country.
The last few weeks have been full of making preparations for the move, and much of it was not easy or enjoyable stuff. Flying across the country to find a house in a totally new and “strange” land; moving all of one’s household that has been in storage for nearly a year into moving pods, deciding what must be moved in pods and what must be in the car, finding routes to take on such a difficult journey with baby and dogs in the car, knowing that some parts of our country are hostile toward a couple of mixed ethnicities and how to navigate safer places . . . it often has felt overwhelming to me, and I’m not even the one going anywhere. I’m watching our dear ones prepare for and make this journey.
And yet. I am going somewhere. And you are, too. We are all on a life journey that is taking us places whether that includes a cross country move or taking on the next challenge that life hands to us. Life does keep handing us challenges, and they require something of us. Thought. Reflection. Decisions. Money. Feelings–so many feelings. Risk. Hope. Fear. Hesitation. Courage.
And trust. We don’t move anywhere in life’s journey without some trust. There have been many points in their move to California that lead up to the moment when they pull away from the curb for the last time. All that was left was to trust into the journey itself. All the preparations have been made. What’s left is the doing, the driving, the work of the journey.
And so it is for each of us. Our lives have been preparing us for this moment however that looks for us. What’s left is an act of trust, the next step. We let go of the “what ifs” and we move that foot forward and rest it on a new plot of ground where we have not been before. Until now. Which makes a huge point. Trust is always about what we choose to do now. Never in the past. Never in the future. What we choose to do now.
~Bob Patrick
